Samantha Harvey: ‘sticks to her abiding theme of how easily memory can lapse into self-deception’.
Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

That Samantha Harvey’s new novel should present itself as a medieval detective mystery might seem something of a U-turn for a writer who once spoke of having renounced “the impulse to put something more marketable” in her work.

Previously she has explored dementia (The Wilderness), the idea of how a modern-day Socrates would fare (All Is Song) and – before everyone went mad for Elena Ferrante – a female friendship gone vengefully sour (Dear Thief). But while ostensibly a change of tack, The Western Wind, about a priest who purports to investigate the drowning of a wealthy landowner, sticks to her abiding theme of how easily memory – a matter of belief – can lapse into self-deception.

Set in the late 15th century in the isolated English village of Oakham, it opens with the disappearance of Thomas Newman, whose grand plans for modernisation include a bridge across the local river. His friend, Herry Carter, tells the parish priest, John Reve, that he saw Newman drown. Yet there’s no body to be found, and when Carter later confesses that he actually killed Newman, Reve dismisses his remorse out of hand – which is where things start getting murky.

Harvey isn’t afraid to end a chapter with a jolt of drama and her language is relaxed, easy on ye olde syntax

Soon the local dean is involved, concerned that a nearby monastery might exploit the unrest to make a land grab. “A priest is also a judge and a sheriff, whether or not he wants to be,” the dean tells Reve. “We need a murderer by tomorrow.” To quell gossip, the dean pledges a pardon for whoever makes a confession that will solve the case, tasking Reve with obtaining it in the usual way, even at the expense of a lie – no small matter when the likely punishment, despite that promise of absolution, is to be burned at the stake.

Reve’s confession box is a sound mechanism for unspooling his parishioners’ individual stories, as Harvey develops a panorama of a furtive congregation filtered through his point of view. Everyone we meet – not least Reve himself – wants to unburden themselves, from a fever-struck young woman who claims she was the killer, to the churchwarden who frets that, having locked the church door for fear of an owl, she prevented Newman (perhaps suicidal?) from seeking absolution. Then there’s the other chief landowner, Townshend, an obvious beneficiary of Newman’s death – and with whose wife Newman was having an affair.

Harvey has in the past been a dab hand with an unreliable narrator and the sly structure of Reve’s account, which starts four days after Newman’s death before moving backwards, gives his actions layers of significance that it takes time to excavate. It’s ostensibly to protect Townshend from being fingered as the prime suspect that he starts to meddle with what might be evidence (hiding Newman’s will, among other covert manoeuvres). But his motives aren’t above suspicion, especially once we learn that Newman – ever the radical – had teased Reve about how he ought to divest himself of his priestly authority and teach the villagers to worship by themselves.

The story is rich and tangled but never slow. Harvey isn’t afraid to end a chapter with a jolt of drama (“it was then that I heard something crash”) and her language is relaxed, easy on ye olde syntax and with only a dash of antique vocabulary; despite talk of being “cropsick” – which is what you get if you drink too much alcohol – Harvey doesn’t mind having Reve say things such as “upped his pace”, “couldn’t care less” or “create a sense of urgency”. That sometimes risks breaking the spell, but as tension mounts to the final (or first) act, it’s hard not to be riveted by her portrait of a fearful community in the grip of secrecy, or to admire the complexly drawn protagonist who, inwardly grappling with his faith, isn’t so holy that he’s above a bit of realpolitik.

• The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey is published by Jonathan Cape (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99